It's a pain in the rear when any application INSISTS that it knows what is best for me. Why does the window need to pop up in the centered horizontally and vertically on one monitor? Why was that particular size chosen?

It really isn't that difficult to have an application remember where it is, and how big it is, when the window is closed. At least, on Windoze it isn't. I'm sure that config files could be used, to avoid using the registry on Windoze, to record the window size and position, and read to size the new window.

If doing so means dumping the Java VM interface, it's time to dump it.

I know that on my Ubuntu install, you can set a few parameters in the config file to tell it the size (and position, IIRC) to start up as. I doubt that this issue is a result of using Java; its probably something that's been overlooked (whether by the Arduino IDE developers, or by the Processing developers - I don't know).

I will not respond to Arduino help PM's from random forum users; if you have such a question, start a new topic thread.

I mean no disrespect, but here's an idea: Instead of pi$$ing and moaning about things and waiting for the volunteers to fix the free software, maybe people can find a less stressful temporary workaround.

As a newcomer to Arduino, I was really, really annoyed that it didn't remember the last screen size. Really. (See Footnote.) I mean, it's all well and good for fluffalafagaus to say, "It's not really that bad of a problem," but that's not very sensitive to my sensibilities. Really.

I opened-resized-closed a few times. No joy. The stupid thing just wouldn't remember. The window (and the font) were ridiculously small on my Linux workstation.

I endured the annoyance for something like 15 minutes.

Then...

Here's what I found for arduino-0018 (Centos 5.5 Linux and Windows XP platforms):

I opend the Arduino IDE.

On the Files dropdown menu, I clicked on Preferences,and a dialog box opened.

It let me choose a bigger font size. Good deal! (My tired old eyes can use all the help they can get.)

And I really, really liked the "Use external editor" choice. (I haven't ever met an IDE with a built-in text editor that I really liked. Ever.)

But---there was nothing (really---nothing) about window size.

However...

Below the selectable stuff, there some text that tells usMore preferences can be edited directly in the filexxxxxxxxx(edit only when Arduino is not running)

Where the path-and-file name "xxxxxxxxx" depends on where Arduino was installed on your platform.

I quit out of Arduino and opened that file with my favorite text editor.

I found lines like the following (they will both be in that file, but not necessarily one right after the other):default.window.width=(whatever it had decided)default.window.height=(whatever it had decided)

I changed them to values that I prefer. (I poked around in that file and changed a few other things too.)

Anyhow...

Now, I if I resize the Arduino window and quit out of Arduino, it still won't remember the last screen size (boo-hoo), but at least I can pick the default window size I prefer.

Maybe the volunteers will get it right for the next release. In the meanwhile, I can live with that.

Regards,

Dave

Footnote:"You can tell the size of a manby the size of the thingthat makes him mad."---Adlai Stevenson

f you always remember to close with ctrl-q it will remember your window size and position

Hmmm---I could have saved some bandwidth if that were true on my system.

However...

It doesn't work that way with me on Linux with arduino-0018. It doesn't matter how I close the Arduino IDE. It still doesn't remember the last screen size. Always uses the defaults defined in preferences.txt. Always opens centered on my desktop.

Did you do a default installation? My preferences.txt ended up in C:\Documents and Settings\Dave\Application Settings\Arduino

(But I have no idea how it got there. I just unzipped arduino-0018.zip in a "sandbox" directory and started it up.)

I rarely use Windows for anything useful these days (I just use it to test various "cross-platform" distributions for some colleagues), and I don't know if there are other things that people should know.

What are the default.window values in your preferences.txt? What size does the Arduino window open with? What are your Windows screen resolution settings?

Did you exit from all Arduino IDE processes and edit the default.window lines in preferences.txt and then restart Arduino?